The Ides of March

A book quite different from what you have read so far...

If you're not ready to reflect on what you have achieved so far and change the course of your life, you should not read this short self-help story.

Lefteris is an experienced salesman, dedicated to his work and to the store he manages as if it were his own. He's one of those salesmen who can "read" the customer and apply the most appropriate sales technique to convince them - techniques he does not hesitate to narrate in a peculiar and unexpected short sales course. He's "a good man, but quite dynamic", confident in himself and in the course of his life. 

Until the day the company he works for invites him to attend a sales seminar. Him, an experienced salesman... When he is told he needs to re-educate himself as the world changes, everything he believes in is turned upside down...

Dimitris is a young sales trainer, torn between a marriage in hibernation and a profession he loves but which doesn't give him the satisfaction he expects.

Until the day when one of his trainees openly question his adequacy. Then everything he believes in is turned upside down...

The Ides of March marked the middle of the month according to the Roman calendar. The phrase is used today to mark allegorically a cursed day, as on March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated, confirming the omens he had chosen to ignore. While the Ides of March originally symbolized the :middle" of something, today they metaphorically imply the end.

The Ides of March by Vangelis Papadimas can be read from both covers, towards the middle, perhaps symbolizing our inevitable path towards our own Ides of March, our own opportunity to listen to the omens or to ignore them. To change our way of life and be saved, or to remain unchanged and march to the end. To decisevely walk towards spring or to sink into winter. To meet halfway and continue beyond it or to face the end.

A story that, through its narrative simplicity and dual structure, feels like a whisper, sometimes from one ear and sometimes from the other, telling us not to forget to reflect on our lives and to remember that from the middle to the end, time can go by (too) fast...